I.M. Page 4
My chubbiness, my homeliness, was contrasted with my sisters’ beauty. For every sympathetic sideways glance I got, they got smiles, oohs and aahs, heaps of clothes, all the wonderful things reserved for beautiful girls. They were thin and lithe, and my mother, like so many mothers of the time, got into the habit of treating them like cut-out paper dolls. She took them shopping constantly. It was a bonding ritual. My mother’s favorite store was definitely Loehmann’s, which was a Brooklyn institution and a mecca of discounted designer clothing that in its heyday had locations all over New York and its outlying suburbs. When they came of age, my mother initiated my sisters into shopping there like other families might initiate their offspring into Freemasonry. It was a major event to show up at exactly the right time on the right day when one heard rumors about new merchandise coming in from one or another designer brand. At our Saturday breakfasts my mother was full of stories about the original location in the basement of Mrs. Loehmann’s house on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. Mrs. Loehmann would sit on a big chair “like a queen on her throne,” shouting orders at everyone, from the staff to the customers. There was a story about the day the actress Abbe Lane was there shopping with her husband Xavier Cugat, who was dressed elegantly in a handmade tweed suit. In his breast pocket, instead of a pocket square, he had a teacup-size Chihuahua. The number of times my mother spied Lauren Bacall there made it sound like she was a regular, too. “She would fly in from Hollywood just to shop at Loehmann’s. No matter what, there’s nothing like it anywhere else in the world.” About that my mother was right. Originally Loehmann’s was a store that sold actual designer first samples, which were made “like diamonds” under the loving supervision of the designers whose labels were cut out just before the samples were shipped there. My mother and her friends could detect a real designer piece from whatever part of the label that remained. They recognized the exact shade of oyster or ivory of that house’s label and even the tiniest shard of a “P” or a “T” meant it was a real Pauline Trigere or Traina Norell. It was like striking gold. It was before designers archived their clothes. It was before discount retail was something that everyone just expected. It was a very special place, and it breaks my heart that it’s gone for good.
Starting at the age of six or seven, I was brought to the Loehmann’s flagship store in Brooklyn when I stayed home from school on some health pretense. My mother would place me in the corner of the big communal women’s fitting room with a coloring book. I’d sit in that room, ignoring the coloring book and instead observing the broad range of women of all shapes and in all states of undress.
“There is no fashion without foundation.” That’s one of my favorite quotes from Christian Dior. Well, I learned all about foundation—that is, underwear—in that dressing room. Underclothes in those days were huge. Panties were the size of pillowcases and came right up to the waist. Bras were longline and came right down to the waist. Slips. Half and full, trimmed in lace, made in the most disturbing colors, meant to be flesh tones but more the colors of prosthetic limbs. The smells trapped inside the synthetic girdles and shapers: sweat, oregano, camphor, all masked with lavender and orange blossom. Women had bigger breasts—real breasts. And such hair. Hair was bigger and sillier when I was a kid. If a dress didn’t have a very long zipper in back, if you couldn’t step into it with no part of that dress coming near the hair, it couldn’t be considered for purchase.
The women who undressed in front of me probably assumed the seven-year-old boy in their midst was paying no attention to them. But in truth I was studying them—their anatomy, their choice of underwear. Without realizing it at the time, I was beginning a lifelong study of the psychology of women and how they dress.
While I would never judge a woman by such a silly thing as lingerie, I have noticed that the degree to which she cares about her general appearance doesn’t only exist on the outside. Fashion is not for everyone, but if a woman is into clothes, the subject usually begins with her choice of lingerie—and that affects the way she sees herself. I used to meet thousands of young models. I remember one who went on to become a big star. When we first met she was a teenager and a mess—including her lackluster bra and panties. Within a few months of hitting it big she arrived at fittings with the most gorgeous underwear (not to mention a perfect landing strip), her lingerie telling its own coming-of-age tale. That young lady’s upgrade was due in part to the scrutiny of every great stylist, hairdresser, and makeup artist in the fashion world who had their hands on her in those months. But it was mostly because she loved the subject.
The women in the Loehmann’s dressing room chose their lingerie with care. And in my assessment it wasn’t qualified by the distinction between plain or lacy. Even the simplest bra was well-kept and beautifully selected and fitted. I sensed the effort that went into this lovely underdressing was done by each woman to please herself. The feeling of the fabric against her skin, the image she reflected back at herself in the mirror. The lingerie was a manifestation. This, I think, is what occurs when a woman sees a shoe or bag or hat that she feels she must have. She doesn’t think, Oh my god, I wish that were me. She thinks, Oh my god, that is so me. She doesn’t want it because she’s aspiring to be someone she’s not; she wants it because she already feels like that woman on the inside.
My mother made some of her most important fashion discoveries at Loehmann’s. And that was the word she used, too—important. Only she pronounced the word, in perfect Brooklynese, im-PAW-tent. If a blouse or a shoe was important, then it could make your whole outfit. The most important piece my mother ever acquired at Loehmann’s was a Chanel suit—a ready-to-wear sample with the labels cut out of course. I think it was the only Chanel to ever find its way to that store. The suit was made in an oversized black-and-white houndstooth bouclé with black braid, gold buttons, and orange silk lining.
Back then the most worshipped designer in the Loehmann’s dressing room was Norman Norell. Some say he was the first American to rival the European houses in originality and beautiful quality. He was known for his sophistication, and for his clientele: Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, many of the first ladies of the time. Even with the label cut out, Norell was the most important of all. The biggest fights in that dressing room were over Norell. In those days there were dressy pants ensembles referred to as “pajamas” that were worn in the same context as evening dresses. One day my mother found a Norell pajama ensemble, and it was like she won the lottery. A hush fell over the room. My mother was a perfect designer sample size, which was a great source of pride for her (and the entire family), and when she put on the Norell pajamas they fit perfectly—inspiring even more jealousy. Norell’s collection that season had a nautical theme, so the ensemble was sailor-inspired—off-white chiffon with a midi collar, navy-blue satin trim, and a pussycat bow. The matching crystal-pleated chiffon pants were made to look like a skirt, and only if you entered a room doing the splits could anyone have realized you were actually wearing pants. That little secret made those pants all the more glamourous to me.
My mother had a special talent for putting things together. “Cheater pieces,” things with lesser provenance, were regularly mixed with designer clothes. Even reconstructions. Once, while window-shopping on the Upper East Side, she spotted a fabulous sweater. It was pink angora trimmed with pink marabou feathers at the shoulders, the most glamourous and inventive sweater I’d ever seen at that stage of my young life. We knew it was too expensive for my oldest sister, Norma, judging by the exclusive-looking storefront of the boutique. But my mother made note of it, and a few weeks later she found a sleeveless pink angora shell and trimmed it with matching marabou feathers she bought at M&J Trimming. My sister wore that sweater to her sweet sixteen, and it made a real sensation.
From the time I was born till I moved out of the house at twenty, the quest for clothes was endless. Dresses, boots, coats, sweaters. It was a full-time job for my mother, one that she took to with a palpable joy. She and my sisters would arri
ve home with overflowing shopping bags, the contents of which would then be hashed out. They’d try on clothes and ask my opinion, which is odd considering how young I was. They valued what I said and gave me power to approve or veto things. I don’t know how I got the position of family fashion and style arbiter, but it’s one I stepped right into with great relish and aplomb. And when my mother didn’t agree with my pronouncements she’d say, “Excuse me, Mr. Designer. What did I do all those years before you were born?”
I would go so far as to say that between my mother’s wardrobe and dressing my sisters, clothes were the number-one obsession in our household for those years when my sisters were “on the market.” I might have envied them this level of care and attention, but even then I knew that the fun of dressing up had to be outweighed by the stress they felt in relinquishing all power to influence their own futures. Girls were married as young as sixteen, and if they weren’t married by eighteen or nineteen, people started to worry. By the time they were twenty they were old maids. There was nothing that my sisters or any Syrian girl could do to move the process along. They were expected to wait for the right eligible Syrian boy to notice them and pluck them out of the chorus of hundreds of other girls vying for rich husbands.
While my sisters were being groomed for marriage, I wondered what was to become of me. At that point gender identity didn’t present itself as a problem because the very idea that I might have a choice in the matter was preposterous. I’ve always identified more as a woman than anything and if times were different I might have chosen to become a female in appearance; in a lot of ways I operated in the family like a third daughter more than as an only son. Concepts such as “gender orientation” and “sexual preference” weren’t spoken of in any terms, especially not to children. Back then, heterosexual was the only option, so I hid my real self. But the older I got the harder it became to conceal what I was really feeling. And though I might have been good at shifting shape, accommodating myself to my external reality, I was never any good at lying.
The visions I had of my future had mostly to do with fulfilling my dreams about art, show business, design, but also dreams of being fully understood. There were absolutely no available examples of what I wanted to be. Literally none. My parents, my teachers would never have accepted, even with my overt effeminacy, that I wasn’t straight. What I wanted was a life where I wouldn’t feel so ashamed of every aspect of myself, from being overweight to being girlish. Even before I knew exactly what it was I was ashamed of, I felt shame. I had no real understanding of myself, just a constant vibration, a faint register of dread that followed me around and sometimes erupted into mysterious depression or uncontrollable fits. I didn’t know what or why or how, but great, destructive shame was hidden on a rooftop somewhere, stalking me, like a sniper.
3
I was born homosexual. Very early in my childhood, I remember lying in bed, awake, anxious, calming myself by imagining that I was in the arms of a man—an adult man. This wasn’t a sexual fantasy. It was my “husband” and we floated on a raft, my bed, in a large ocean where no one could reach us. For years I slept with two rag dolls I’d made, and I’d fantasize that they were our children. This man who was my husband didn’t really have a persona. If you asked me to describe him, other than the fact that he had dark hair, I couldn’t. All I know is that night after night my husband and I floated with our children on our raft, and that was the image that made me feel safe enough to fall asleep. As a child, I had no idea about sex or sexual attraction; I felt love. And these romantic, loving feelings were for men. Sex wasn’t a factor until later.
As a young boy, as young as I can remember, I flirted with men in the way some little girls might—innocently, but craving their attention and wanting to charm them. When I was nine I was sent to Manhattan Beach Day Camp, and there was a counselor who I was just mad about. His name was Mike, and he was in his late teens. He had dirty-blond hair, a long beautiful body, and traces of a goatee. He noticed my attention and without ever breaking heterosexual character, he made me feel accepted and appreciated. It seemed that the only way to communicate with the other counselors was via sports, but Mike was different. He was interested in my arts-and-crafts projects, which were the saving grace of my otherwise miserable days.
One of the great moments I recall of being seized by major artistic motivation occurred while I was at that camp. There were two evergreen trees that grew side by side, one slightly taller than the other. I looked at those trees and instantly knew exactly how to reproduce them on the page. I knew, perhaps from having unconsciously soaked up other paintings I’d seen, how to make my brushstrokes evocative of the texture of needles and branches. And I added a lot of blue to the dark green watercolors to capture the late afternoon August light. I painted in the camp’s art room, well away from where I’d seen those trees, and Mike exalted my painting and my talent. It was by far the happiest moment of that summer.
I also felt a special affinity with my mother’s brothers, both of whom left the Syrian community behind. My mother’s brother Harry worked as a nuclear physicist alongside luminaries such as Wernher von Braun and Enrico Fermi until he chose the more lucrative business of retail. He and his brother, Sam, opened a chain of discount variety stores called Everyone’s that disappeared about thirty years ago, but which had a kind of ubiquitous place in the New York City landscape almost in the way “Azuma” or “Buster Brown Shoes” did. Harry married a non-Syrian-Jewish woman named Deanne, which didn’t go over too well with the family.
Deanne was a strange bird. She dressed in big, colorful printed caftans trimmed with feathers and sequins and wore oversized sunglasses indoors and out. Stylish yes, with big mood swings, which I think had a negative effect on my uncle and her two daughters. But I liked her. She had a cosmopolitan group of friends. Her best friend, Michael Sherman, was the first out homosexual I’d ever encountered, and I was both madly intrigued and terrified of him. I remember my aunt invited him to join us at the Silver Gull Beach Club in Breezy Point, sometime around 1968, where my parents rented a cabana for the few summers we weren’t on the Jersey Shore. He arrived wearing a Pucci-print bikini that was clearly not a men’s swimsuit; the matching minidress as a cover-up; a bowl haircut with bangs; and huge bug-eye sunglasses. He also had an extremely effeminate manner that he was not at all ashamed of. Staring right at him, as a child does, I asked my mother if he was a man or a woman, which made him giggle. He and my aunt Deanne were from the outside world. They spoke of fancy things. Fashion. The Arts. “‘F’ Island,” which was the affectionate name for Fire Island in those days. Deanne’s mother was a painter named Julia Sherman (oddly, no relation to Michael), whose paintings hung in their home in Sands Point, Long Island, and in their glamourous apartment on Park Avenue. The paintings were huge, colorful, geometric compositions in the mod, psychedelic color palette of the late fifties and early sixties. I pored over those pictures as a little boy, and they influenced my sense of color in a profound way. Now they hang in my cousin Arlene’s apartment, and they still fill me with an inexplicable lightness that I can only attribute to the happiness I felt as a kid in that cosmopolitan world that was so far away from the community.
My mother’s brother Sam was my very favorite, even though we didn’t really spend enormous amounts of time together. I always thought he would have been the perfect father for me. My mother had an especially close relationship with him—he was the first boy born to the family and closest to her in age. There is the sweetest picture of them circa 1935 sitting on a baby elephant at the circus, which describes their relationship to a T. They’re holding hands, soul mates, my mother’s gaze strong, my uncle Sam’s vulnerable. He’s sweet; she’s protective. In that photo they live in a bubble of sibling intimacy that dreams are made of.
As long as I can remember, Uncle Sam’s presence in my life brought enlightenment and joy. One Hanukkah night when I was five or six, in the early dark of daylight savings, Uncle Sam opened the Bronx
branch of Everyone’s, which had an extensive section of discount toys, to all his nieces and nephews. There was a considerable number of us, at least eight, and we were allowed to get as many toys as we wanted. I will always remember that night, driving through the Bronx, the filth of the city winter, traffic lights reflecting colored blurs on the icy streets. Scrambling through the aisles in that store, grabbing toys with total abandon. Ecstasy!
Uncle Sam was tall and good-looking; he had a solid, neat appearance, and thick hair that turned very white when he was in his midtwenties. (My mother also had white hair by her middle twenties, which is when she began the lifelong chore of coloring her hair; I was looking forward to being prematurely white and was really disappointed when my hair didn’t turn by my middle twenties.) He had an easy personality, an uncomplicated way of thinking, so deeply logical and plain. He expressed himself in that direct way, too, and had a wonderful, deep, round laugh like Santa Claus, which I notice is the sound I produce now when I laugh. He and his good-looking, zaftig wife, Sandy, made an unusually handsome couple. They weren’t constant visitors the way my mother’s youngest sister, Aunt Adele, was, and I always assumed it was because they lived in Manhattan, as if it were the farthest place from Brooklyn on Earth. In truth, I don’t think Sandy and my mother got along. Sandy, like my aunt Deanne, wasn’t a Syrian girl, which was a huge strike against her. I’m sure Sam and Sandy felt alienated in many of the ways I do now, but if Sandy did hold a grudge against my mother in particular, I feel she was justified. The story goes that when Sam and Sandy first got married my uncle suggested to his new bride that she go shopping with my mother in order to bring Sandy’s personal style up a notch or two. As you can imagine, Sandy wasn’t thrilled with that idea.